U.S. officials are coming to a troubling realization about Iran’s repeated threats to kill Donald Trump and some of his former top generals and national security strategists: Tehran isn’t bluffing — and it isn’t giving up anytime soon.
Iran has been openly threatening Trump and those who oversaw his national security strategy since January 2020, when Trump ordered a drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani, then Iran’s most powerful military general. Tehran has put out videos depicting the future deaths of Trump and others who helped orchestrate the Soleimani attack, pushed for their arrest and extradition and issued menacing statements promising revenge.
U.S. intelligence community officials briefed the Trump campaign last month about assassination threats against the former president from Iran, with the Trump campaign saying they were warned the threat has “heightened in the past few months.” The briefing followed a pair of assassination efforts on Trump this summer. No evidence has been presented to link those to Tehran.
But Iran’s efforts to kill Trump and former senior officials it has blamed for the Soleimani strike are even more extensive and aggressive than previously reported, according to a dozen officials familiar with the Iranian assassination threat.
“This is extraordinarily serious,” said Matt Olsen, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security. “Iran has made it very clear that they are determined to seek retaliation against former officials in connection with the Soleimani strike.”
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